Shadows yet in her eyes, she leaned forward and, bracing her arms on either side of his head, dipped her head for a wetly sexual kiss, all tongue and teeth. “Yes,” she whispered in the aftermath. “So lie back and take it.”
Raphael laughed, the masculine sound a rough caress over Elena’s skin. Shivering, she said, “Stop that,” knowing full well he’d pitched his voice to arouse.
“Stop what?” It was a purr, a thousand strands of exquisite fur.
Moaning, she kissed her way down his throat and chest, her panties having gone from damp to wet in the space of a heartbeat. “So not fair, but”—she licked her way along the fine line of hair on his navel—“this should even the stakes.”
No warning, no buildup, she took his c**k into her mouth.
He jerked, his hand fisting in her hair as a groan left his chest. Whimpering at the way that sound rubbed across her intimate flesh, she swallowed deeper, pressing her tongue along the underside as she laved him with affection, the pleasure as much hers as his. Her scalp smarted when he tugged . . . so she grazed him with her teeth.
“You are playing dangerous games with your consort,” came the rough warning from the magnificent man who was her own.
Sucking hard, she drew her mouth oh-so-slowly off the long, thick length of him. “You mean you didn’t like it?” she asked as innocently as she could.
He flipped her off him and onto her front so fast, she had no idea how he’d managed it without tangling their wings. “Now”—a dark warning—“it is your turn to be good and take it.”
“Oh, God.” Hands fisted in the pillows, she bit her lower lip in anticipation of his touch and shivered when he slipped his fingers under the sides of her panties.
Hot breath, his mouth on the dip at her spine, his tongue flicking out to taste her skin before he drew her panties down over her butt and lower. Halting with them tangled around her thighs, he turned his attention to kissing her inner thighs, the panties trapping her when she tried to widen her stance.
“Raphael.”
Nipping at her thigh in retaliation for that sensual complaint, he tugged off the panties and rose up over her again, his c**k rigid against her back and his weight delicious as he leaned down to murmur in her ear. As he spoke, describing the erotic pleasures to which he’d like to introduce her, his hand slipped under her body to squeeze her breast, tug at her nipple. When he asked her to let him into her mind, she didn’t hesitate, the trust between them such that she knew he’d never take advantage.
Pleasure flooded her body in slow waves, ripple after ripple, as if he’d turned a switch in her mind. “I can,” he said against her throat, “do this to you at any time.” His body shifting, the blunt head of his c**k nudging at her hypersensitive entrance, her flesh creamy with welcome. “So long as I can touch your mind, I can bring you pleasure . . . even in the midst of a crowd.”
“Don’t. You. Dare,” she managed to get out between gasps as he thrust in with exquisite slowness, the hard steel of his c**k relentless against her swollen flesh.
Masculine laughter, his hand continuing to squeeze and pet her br**sts; his mouth shifting to the inner curve of her wings. The instant he licked directly along the edge where her wings emerged from her back, she went off like dy***ite, clenching around him until he gripped her hip, pinned her down, and began to ride her, hard and deep.
Bucking up against him, her body out of control, she cried out his name as the orgasm peaked with a fury and felt him fall with her in a final, powerful thrust.
• • •
Later, as they lay tangled in bed, the near white of Elena’s hair tumbling across his skin and her head on his shoulder, he gently squeezed her nape. “What did you dream?”
She went motionless, her hand folding into a fist against his chest. “You woke me up before anything really happened.”
“You’re getting into a bad habit, Elena.” His voice was hard, the echoes of pleasure fading rapidly under a wave of anger.
Rising off his chest, his consort shoved her hair out of the way. “Don’t use that tone on me.” It was a furious command, her eyes angry and alive and beautiful. “We’re more than that.”
“If we’re more than that,” he said, his own anger honed to a deadly edge, “then why do you keep lying to me?”
White lines around her mouth, she swung away without replying. When she got out and began to dress, he did the same. His consort, he’d begun to realize, did not do well in contained areas when driven by anger and nightmare, so he’d give her the sky. The one thing he would not give her was distance.
They flew out three minutes later, heading seaward. The waves were high tonight, the sky dark once they left the lights of Manhattan behind. Elena flew and flew and he knew that, once again, she was pushing herself well beyond her limits when it came to the physical strength needed for endurance flights.
It had nothing to do with determination and everything to do with physiological fact.
Elena’s body simply hadn’t developed the necessary musculature, immortality yet growing into her cells, but he didn’t stop her headlong flight. Words would mean nothing, not when she was like this; no, she had to come face-to-face with the perilous risk she took without thought to the consequences.
And worse, this was the second time she’d done the same thing. A third could well be lethal.
If she fell from this height? It was doubtful she’d survive. Even if her luck held, she’d break every bone in her body, her organs collapsing from the impact. Young as she was, that would kill her—either the actual injuries or the inevitable drowning. Unlike him, she couldn’t yet survive without air.